FOX-HUNTING AND MELTON 3 



has always been sufficient condemnation for a man 

 that he was known to be fond of hounds and hunting 

 to be set down for all time as an uncultivated boor, 

 without a refined taste or a thought beyond the 

 pursuit of a fox. 



The easy and fluent style in which Beckford 

 penned his Thoughts on Hunting a hundred and 

 twenty years ago, would have earned for him un- 

 gratified admiration if the subject chosen had been 

 aught else, but having confessed himself a sports- 

 man, his work was considered unworthy of being 

 read. Johnson, in his Lives of the Poets, grudges 

 giving any favourable mention of Somerville, who 

 committed the crime of writing on a subject — shunt- 

 ing — of which his commentator was ignorant. In 

 referring to The Chase, Johnson says, " to this poem 

 praise cannot totally be denied " ; but in spite of 

 such faint praise the poem has stood the test of 

 time, and still appeals to every sportsman who reads 

 it. There could be no better graphic description 

 of hunting scenes set either in prose or verse. 



Sporting literature is not always of a very high 

 class, but there is no reason it should not be credited 

 with what merits it possesses. 



There must be very few hunting men who have 

 not read Hundley Cross, and still less who, having 

 read, do not appreciate every line of the book, but I 

 very much doubt our old friend being found in the 

 library of any except those with sporting tastes. 

 I admit that the vivid descriptions of runs and other 

 technical matter would not appeal to an ordinary 

 reader in the same way it does to a hunting man, 

 but the immortal Jorrocks is sketched in with the 

 hand of an artist, and whatever your tastes may be 



